Warp Gate
by Cythwyn
Summary: A little girl, ignored by her parents, receives letters from a strange person... before she knows it, it spirals out of control.


A/N: hey, this is a dream that I had once--as in, over and over again. It makes no sense, but I love it.

The little girl sat just beyond the dock on a small boulder she had found out you could get to by climbing on the roots of a birch tree that grew precariously close to the river. She seemed quite at home there; the rock was warm from the sun and if she slid way down she could dip her toes in the icy cold, rushing water that swirled eddies around those tiny digits. The river itself was not that fast in most places; however, if caught in a current near the middle it could carry you a mile downstream in the blink of an eye.

The girl didn't seem to care about that particular fact. She lay back comfortably, enjoying the quiet sunshine and the not-so-quiet chirping birds. Her dark brown hair spread across the rock; her equally brown eyes were half-closed in silent enjoyment. If one looked at her quickly, one would see a normal happy child about five years old taking a breather from life as she soaked up the sun. At second glance, however, the same person would notice that her hair had a ratty quality to it, and her eyes betrayed a certain sadness that was not characteristic of someone that age.

As the afternoon light faded, the little girl stirred. She shifted her body up, getting better leverage, then sat upright. After a moment of blinking about and shaking her head to clear it, she stood.

Something caught her eye. It was a piece of paper, stuck between a few roots of the forlorn birch tree. She leaned forward, clutching at the boulder, and grabbed it, nearly falling flat on her face in the water. Opening it, it took a little while for her to read it, as the few words that were on it were in cursive.

_Hello, little one. What is your name?_

Confused, she looked around. The letter was for her, of course—who else? The river never reached that height on the roots, so it couldn't have gotten stuck. But who could have known she spent all of her time here?

Taking out a crayon from her overall pocket, she wrote back,

_Hi my names Victoria._

Folding the paper carefully, she placed it in the same spot she had found it, climbed on the birch roots to the dock, and skipped merrily home.

"Mommy!"

The 25-year-old blonde-haired woman barely looked up from her computer. "Yes, dear."

"I have a new friend!"

Her mother sipped from her cup of coffee, her fingers flying over the keyboard. "How nice."

"He sends me letters and…" the little girl trailed off when she realized the older woman wasn't listening. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned to trudge away. Her mother never listened. She should have known today was no different.

"Daddy?" she called, running down to the garage. "Daddy?"

The beer-bellied man straightened from the car he was fixing, wiping his hands on an oil-stained rag. "Yeah?" he grunted.

"I have a new…" her father bent over the car engine again, reaching for something stuck deep inside.

"What?"

"Friend. I have a new friend."

"Cool."

Victoria perked up. He was listening. "He sends me letters in the river."

"Yeah?"

"Uh-huh. He calls me 'liddle one.'"

Her father squinted at the piece he had extracted from the engine. "Does he."

"Uh-huh. An' he—"

"I'm workin'. Can't you tell your mother?"

Victoria hung her head and went back inside. Why didn't anyone listen to her? It was always like this, but she never stopped hoping that sometime one of her parents would actually pay attention, pay _full _attention, to her.

"Go to bed," her mother called from the kitchen from where she was working.

Go to bed. Brush your teeth. Catch the bus. Go away. It was the same every day. No how was your day? did you have fun? let me kiss you good night. No. Go away. You can have whatever you want, just leave us alone.

Disheartened yet again, Victoria went upstairs to the room up in the attic. Normally, a child her age would have been frightened to be up so high and so far away from her parents, but she didn't really care about the height, and since her parents didn't care what she did, it didn't matter. There she sat on her bed, confused and depressed, staring out the window to the south of where the river was. Since there were no bedrooms facing the river, she had to settle for one as close to that direction as possible.

Why weren't her mommy and daddy like the ones she saw on TV? Loving, caring, doing whatever they could in order to keep their children safe and happy… how she wished they were like that! Victoria put her pajamas on slowly, dejectedly, then crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head, not bothering to brush her teeth or take a bath. In a house where the parents didn't enforce any rules, she could do whatever she wanted.

She closed her eyes and cried herself to sleep.

Victoria dreamed about her new friend all night. Who was he? Was it a she? Was the letter _really _to her, or did someone else go down to the dock? She couldn't wait to go there the next morning.

When it finally was morning, she ran as fast as she could in her pajamas to the docks, climbed over the birch roots, and turned around.

There was a piece of paper there, all right, but she couldn't tell if it was the same one from last night or not. She pulled it out and read it:

_I am glad to meet you, Victoria. My name is Xarral._

She beamed. Wrote, with the crayon she had carried down just in case,

_I tried telling mommy and daddy about you but they wouldnt listen. They don't care._

She shoved the piece of paper into the roots, climbed back over to the dock, and raced back up the path to get ready for school.

Every morning before the bus came to take her to school, Victoria ran down to the river, pounded her way down the dock, climbed the beech roots to the boulder, and turned around. And every morning, there was a letter there waiting for her, written in the same stylistic, wavy cursive that took her several minutes to read, and addressed to her. They became longer and longer, and since it was so fancy she couldn't read it, she would take it to school, decipher it, and write a message back by the time she got home. She never spoke to anyone about it, because no one cared.

Until, one day, she mentioned it to her teacher.

"I have a new friend," she said quietly, not thinking that her Mrs. Boone would care.

"Oh, really, sweetheart," Mrs. Boone said.

Victoria lit up. "Yep," she said cheerfully. "He lives in the river an' he calls me 'liddle one.'"

"In the river?"

"Yep! He comes out at night and gives me letters, an' I write back."

Mrs. Boone blinked. "Letters?"

"Wanna see one?" at her teacher's nod, Victoria pulled an older folded sheet of paper out of her pocket and handed it over. This particular one read:

_I am glad no one cares about me. It would not do for someone to ask many questions._

Mrs. Boone's eyes widened. "Oh, dear," she said softly.

Victoria reached her hand out for it. "He doesn't like to be known," she said, "but he said I could talk about him if I wanted to. He said he's been watchin' me."

"Dear," the young, motherly woman said, "I think we need to talk to your parents."

At the parent-teacher conference that night, hastily set up by Mrs. Boone and the principal Mr. Warder, Victoria's parents denied knowing anything about the messages.

"I tried to tell you," Victoria whispered. "You never listened. You never listen."

"You told us about the new friend, I think," her father grunted. "Not about the letters."

Mrs. Boone sat up higher. "You should be attuned to _everything _your child does, including imaginary friends—they may not be that imaginary!"

The principal put a hand on her arm, calming her down. "She said she got these letters by the river," he said. "How far away is the river from your house?"

"About an eighth of a mile," Victoria's mother said.

"And you let her go there _alone_?"

"Can we go home now?" the little girl asked, not knowing exactly what was going on. "I want to give my friend a' answer."

"Absolutely not!" Mrs. Boone gasped.

"I don't think that would be wise, Victoria," her mother added.

"We should call the police," the principal murmured. They looked at him. "This 'invisible friend' may be an escaped criminal, a homeless man, or just a loony. He's dangerous, either way. We need to catch him and make sure he can't cause any more trouble."

She was thunderstruck. "But he's my friend!"

Mrs. Boone got out of her chair and knelt by her. "Sweetheart," she said, "this man may not be your friend."

Victoria's eyes filled with tears. "Mizz Boone," she cried. "He _listens _to me!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Nobody listens to me," she cried, and before anyone could stop her, bolted out of the office.

She ran halfway home before she ran out of breath, and dropped to the ground. She was sobbing; bent over so her tears splattered on the pavement. Taking out the pencil she had taken from class, she pulled out a piece of paper reserved for the writing of letters to her friend. Setting it against the ground, she wrote,

_Go away! Theyr going to send for the police!_

She got up, put both pencil and paper in her pocket, and continued to run.

They found her as she put both feet on the dock again, trotting down the wharf towards the path home. The cop who found her picked her up and deposited her into her parent's arms. She received a brief scolding and was shut in her room. From up there, she watched the police comb through their woods, searching for any evidence at all that would lead them to a madman. She hoped they wouldn't find her letter. She hoped they wouldn't find _him_.

They wouldn't find him. He was much too well hidden—they wouldn't think of looking in the river, would they? Because there, she believed, he stayed.

She _had _to go find him. If they couldn't find him, maybe he would come to her. He _was _her friend, after all. And she would run away with him. She didn't want to be ignored anymore. She wanted someone who loved her.

Victoria tiptoed downstairs. Her parents were busy answering questions asked by the police, and she sneaked by without hindrance. She got to the back door, and slowly opened it—it squeaked if opened quickly.

She was closing it when a sudden gust of wind snatched it out of her hand and smashed it against the frame.

Immediately, she heard her parents' voices: "What was that? Victoria?"

Panicking, she bolted. The door opened behind her, and she heard more voices—"Victoria! Victoria, come back!"

_He'll come_, she thought. _He'll come_.

"Xarral! Xarral!" she shrieked. _He'll come_.

Her small body moved along the path with astonishing speed, and the adults were just behind her. She ran headlong, not even seeing, but letting her feet take the path as its own—she knew every little dip, root, and branch in her way; the others didn't. Chanting _He'll come_ in her mind like a mantra, screaming "Xarral!" at the top of her voice, she stepped onto the dock.

And then everything was white.

Victoria stopped, staring up into the blinding light that had suddenly blazed out from the end of the dock, ignoring the gasps and shouts from the adults behind her.

"Xarral?" she said.

The being standing on the end of the small wooden dock dipped its head in a graceful nod. It—_he_—was enormous, covered in scales, had no mouth, and wore brightly-colored clothing. The fiery eyes gave a sense of great age.

Victoria, of course, didn't care about any of this. She smiled, and held out her arms. "I knew you'd come."

Xarral stepped forward, reached down with gigantic hands, and picked her up.

Victoria's parents, Christopher and Dana Routhe, were annoyed when they were summoned to a parent-teacher conference in such short notice. When they got there, and were accused of negligence, they were immediately on the defensive.

"I don't know about no letters," Christopher said, frowning.

"I haven't heard about anything, either," Dana agreed.

"I tried to tell you," Victoria whispered, so softly that they almost couldn't hear her. "You never listened. You never listen."

"You told us about the new friend," Christopher grunted, "I think. You didn't tell us about the letters."

"You should be attuned to _everything _your child does, including imaginary friends—they may not be that imaginary!"

They were annoyed and a little frightened. They weren't _that _negligent as to let their child be kidnapped! They were about to apologize and explain, when their daughter suddenly got upset and ran out.

"Look what you did," Mrs. Boone cried. "She's upset now!"

"You were the one that told her she couldn't see her friend anymore," Christopher argued.

"Well, she can't, and I don't see any reason to lie."

"Victoria!" Dana was calling down the hallway. "Victoria, come back here this instant! She's not stopping," she told them.

Mrs. Boone immediately ran after her; Mr. Warder picked up the phone. "I'm calling the police," he said. "Go after her and try to catch up with her. It's very dangerous to be outside at night, especially a five-year-old! Go," he snapped, when they just stood there stupidly.

They went. And when they found their daughter trotting down the dock, an odd little triumphant light in her eyes, they bundled her up and sent her to her room.

"Have you seen nothing?" the police officer asked them a little while later, pen poised above his little paper pad.

"Nothing at all," Dana said. "We didn't even know she was receiving letters. She leaves the house all the time, but we don't know where she goes."

He frowned, glancing up at them from bushy brown eyebrows. "No idea?"

"No… well, she goes in the woods… we think."

There was a sudden _wham,_ and everyone jumped. Christopher went over to the hall and peered down through the window.

"What was that?" Dana asked.

"I think that was Victoria. Yeah, she's running into the woods!"

Everyone lunged towards the back door at once, shouting, "Victoria! Victoria!"

The little girl didn't stop. They followed her quick little body through the maze of the forest, tripping and stumbling even though they had flashlights, as she screamed something about a "zaral."

And then that light—that blinding light filled everything. Dana and Christopher as well as all the police officers threw up their hands to cover their eyes, crying out. Dana and Christopher could just barely see the little form of their daughter standing in the middle of the dock, gazing straight up into it. The blazing illumination didn't seem to hurt her eyes.

And then she lifted her arms up and out, as if embracing the burning light. There was a wonderful smile on her face.

The glow slowly faded. Blinking spots from their eyes, the group looked around.

Everything was the way it should: the river lapped gently against the wood, and night-creatures called softly to each other as if nothing had happened.

But Victoria was nowhere to be found.


End file.
